HYDERABAD: A division bench of the High Court on Tuesday asked former chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh IYR Krishna Rao to convince the court how the PIL filed by him was maintainable when he himself was part of the decision-making process on the 'Swiss Challenge' issue, and posted the matter for hearing after summer vacation i.e. in June.
The bench of acting chief justice Ramesh Ranganathan and justice K Vijaya Lakshmi was dealing with Rao's PIL which alleged that the Swiss Challenge method had been approved in violation of the guidelines framed by the Supreme Court and also of the rules of AP Infrastructure Development Enabling Act (APIDE), and urged the court to set it aside.
When the matter came up for hearing, the bench asked the petitioner to tell whether he was the chief secretary or not at the time of issue of notification on Swiss Challenge method meant to develop the new capital city Amaravati.
In reply, Krishna Rao, appearing as party-in-person, said that though he was the state's chief secretary at the time of issue of notification, he never supported the Swiss Challenge method. As the relevant documents were not provided under the RTI Act, he urged the court to take the records available with him into consideration.
The bench said that it would hear the case after summer vacation and adjourned the matter.